When Neighbours Fight

It was discouraging to hear this from older islanders, back in the early days when we were just a group of friends dreaming about sharing land and lives. But we did hear it, and fairly often.

With great satisfaction, I can report that they were wrong. We did do it. It’s been 12 years since the first person moved onto our Denman Island land co-operative, and we are now 15 households strong. It has not fallen apart.

And also, with somewhat less satisfaction, I can report that they were right. We do fight. It can, indeed, get real ugly.

We have small annoyance-level conflicts regularly. Who moved that pile of dirt? Who used scented detergent in the washing machine? Your dog has been barking all afternoon!

And sometimes we have medium-sized conflicts, such as different ideas on how to calculate the resale price of a unit, what criteria to use for new members, or what type of infrastructure to build. For instance, there’s an ongoing conflict about our pond. Or maybe that should be written “pond.” Two years ago, with great anticipation and excitement, we excavated a big hole in a promising location so that we could use the water to irrigate our common garden. Water is life! Food security is our future! We will be self-sufficient! Or so we thought as we happily watched the hole fill to the brim over the winter.

But then in spring, when the rains ended, the water level started dropping. And dropping. By the time the crops needed water, there were just a few feet left, and then just mud, and then just a layer of cracked dry earth on top of rock. The pond was a failure. All that lovely soil did not hold water the way we’d hoped.

What to do? Some of us said, “Buy a pond liner,” while others said, “No, never! Not more plastic in the environment. Let’s work with nature. Let’s line the pond with clay,” to which the pond-liner proponents said something along the lines of, “That might not work and involves vast amounts of labour and finding and trucking in tons of clay. The liner is guaranteed and will last two decades. Let’s be pragmatic here.”

The conversation has been respectful, but we don’t have agreement yet.

We’ve also had big conflicts where conversations weren’t always respectful. There have been tears, shouting matches, sides taken, mediators brought in, and even, on one occasion, a few calls to a lawyer. I’m not going to dish the dirt for you, though. You’ll find no salacious details here. But you might find some food for thought, because as we all know, conflict is part of being alive.

Our society has created laws, enforcement, and a justice system in order to contain and respond to conflict. All these structures rely on hierarchies and complex bureaucracies—two things noticeably missing here at our land co-operative.

We have no hierarchy and no governance or justice systems beyond this: all decisions are made by consensus. We have a bunch of agreements and policies, but they aren’t even collected into one document, and they are hard to enforce.

When it comes to dealing with conflict, we have little to rely on but our hearts, our words, our trust, our goodwill, our patience, and our commitment.

Usually our conflict is centred around boundaries, pets, the extent and type of nature protection, the value of property, and the perpetual quest for balance between personal freedom and the common good.

So how do we deal with conflict? Mostly, we muddle through. It’s a good approach. Muddling involves a certain mindset: humble, open to possibility, open to imperfection, willing to stay with the trouble for as long as needed. We talk and talk and talk. We take breaks to let thoughts and feelings settle and evolve. We set deadlines to resolve conflicts and then we fail to meet them. We talk about our feelings as well as about the details of the issue at hand. Crying at meetings is okay, but so is grabbing a flip chart and making lists of pros and cons.

We keep showing up.

It’s demanding, but we do it. Because not only do we live here, we live here together. It’s not easy to join and not easy to leave. We all chose this project specifically because we wanted to build a communal, collaborative culture. We chose a life of neighbourliness.

As I write this, in late July 2021, our pond is just a big empty pit in the ground. There are many ways you could interpret this. You could see it as a symbol of our inefficiency, our inability to get anything done on a “reasonable” timeline. Or you could see it as a symbol of potential, a waiting container, holding space for whatever comes next.

At a recent meeting, we decided to focus on other sources of water, for now. I heard someone say, “We’ll put our energies into that and in the meantime slowly figure out the pond.”

Everyone else nodded.